August 21, 2013

I'm about to delete the web site for my art gallery that has been closed since July. After spending almost two years working my butt off on that thing I've decided to not let it go completely to waste. Introducing The Art House Gallery Archives! Whether you find out-of-date art gallery files interesting or not, I can find no better place to store this history, at least for now*

We did hang some good artwork and put on some cool shows you might enjoy looking at.

*for now: an expression that was unabashedly overused at the Art House during the first few months of it's existence. All of us who were involved in organizing work tables, display shelves, front desks, merchandise, office equipment, etc. used the phrase as a sad excuse for not really knowing what to do with anything. Let's just leave it like this for now. Let's hang this here for now. Let's not bother with that...for now. For the future, not a very trustworthy phrase. If you find yourself using it too much, take a step back and figure it out first!

Building Nests, Climbing Ladders

site-specific installation of Building Nests, Climbing Ladders

The
Art House had three main gallery spaces for solo and group exhibitions. Our goal was to bring innovative contemporary fine art
to the local public community of Manahawkin, NJ. The focus was always on
the quality, originality and presentation of the artwork.
To
facilitate our goal, the Art House encouraged a creative atmosphere by
presenting interactive, collaborative work, and on-site artist projects.
We also hosted regular public events such as opening receptions, lecture series, happenings, performances, artist talks and poetry readings.

Detail Building Nests, Climbing Ladders

Besides gallery space for monthly exhibits, the Art House also had a gift shop and a classroom. The gift shop was the original location of what was the Lounge. The Lounge, equipped with a comfortable couch, cafe tables, a coffee and snack bar, sheepskin rugs, group photographs and an old TV that played black and white silent movies, is where we hosted monthly open mic nights, sewing circles, artist meetings and other miscellaneous artistic events. It later morphed into the more organized gift shop mostly because the same 5 people showed up to all our artistic events and the chips from the snack bar eventually went stale.

The gift shop was its own work of art. Fun, interesting, useful merchandise was carefully displayed and lovingly shoved into every illuminated crevice of the cozy space. It's also where one of the few built-in speakers that came with the building cranked out a wide variety of unexpected music from my husband's ipod, anything from the Violent Femmes to Zap Mama to Charlie Mingus to Charlie Brown's Christmas. Walking through the galleries into the eclectic mix of changing merchandise, display decor, the wafting aroma of Nag Champa incense, and music overhead made the space pretty fun to come back to. At least I thought so!

View of the gift shop, fall 2012

The Lounge following our first Holiday Party, 2011

The classroom, which was a steep flight of stairs up, was one of the brightest rooms in the house, and perfectly suitable for one long folding table with 8 plastic stools, a wall full of storage shelves and another wall full of black chalkboard paint. Some reference books, a cardboard file box full of lesson plans, and 4 aluminum easels later, we had ourselves an art school! That was the idea! Everything at the Art House was prepared for them coming once we had built it. There were students from week one until the end, just not enough of them.

Overall the Art House was a great idea, it just needed more involvement and support, like all things artistic. Here are some pics from our first exhibition...

January 14, 2013

Each week the Art House is filled with a myriad of ups and downs. There is absolutely no consistency except for the fact that there is no consistency. I am constantly delighted, surprised and disgusted all at once. Yes, that is possible. This week's surprise was a thin layer of dirt that made its way from the recently cleaned out basement onto the entire surface of the first floor. Two full days of cleaning later, I was able to get back to business with only the faint smell of dust in the air. Thanks to devoted family members who bore my complaints and Martha Kremer, our new gallery assistant, I was able to, for the most part, keep it together.

Onto more important things like trying to fill our first week of winter semester art classes, which is like trying to figure out what an entire town wants in life and how to give it to them! We now have a kid's class for 5-7 year olds on Saturdays, a class for 8-12 year olds on Thursdays and a combined class for teens and adults on Saturday mornings.

I also worked a bit on the budget. A word that currently exists on paper only. After searching obsessively on etsy.com and the Supermarket for new works to sell at the gallery, my favorites list accumulated to a staggering amount of money. Although my imaginary budget is large and vast, the reality is that after paying most of the bills, there is $96 left in the account. That does not a wholesale order make...This doesn't even include payment to The Sandpaper newspaper for advertising that was barely seen, and events and fundraisers that weren't even covered. It also doesn't include the monstrous, uncalled for bill from Verizon. Hopefully repeated emails to artists came across sincerely.

That covers surprised and disgusted... Delighted came by the end of the week. The new photography exhibit looks fine (as in excellent, masterly and accomplished, according to thesaurus.com); the gift shop is back in action; and the classes I taught were all enjoyable. I had a fresh audience to share my knowledge with, and the classes are so small that I was able to do the work with them. That doesn't make up for the watercolors that I didn't get to work on, but it is something.

You're probably starting to see why art wrestler is an appropriate name! Here we are in small rural family town, strange economy, recent devastation all around...How to make it work???

December 29, 2012

What
a year it's been at The Art House Gallery. Looking back, since opening our doors
in November 2011, a lot has happened! It seems like we've been here
forever (in a good way of course)!

Between the three main gallery spaces we've managed to show a total of ten exhibitions.

Untitled @ the Art House
started the year off with works by local gallery owners Matt Burton of
the M.T Burton Gallery, and Joanne Dozer of Firefly, and NJ photographer
Hena Tayeb.

Local photographer Steven Shattuck had his first solo
exhibition, Memory, in Gallery II.

In February we witnessed live performances during the opening of Some Urban in my Suburban please,
an interactive installation which included a wall full of gorgeous
graffiti and framed gum art by New York artists Carmen Einfinger, Cram
Concepts, Meghann Snow & Samantha Palmeri.

Another interactive
installation in Gallery III, Building Nests, Climbing Ladders
proved to be an appropriate title as collaborator of the artwork, also
the Art House business partner, escaped us forever through her own
imaginary
cardboard ladder. More room for us to explore and create!

Gallery I was
then transformed into the real owner of the gallery, Samantha
Palmeri's, temporary art studio. Work ensued on paintings for the
current exhibition, New Paintings. Showing these engaging large
scale oil paintings of organic abstract forms brings the Art House's
mission to life, proving that innovative contemporary art does exist on
the Jersey shore!

Other successful exhibits included Works on Paper in the spring. Works by Sandra Milner, Andrea Sauchelli, Artem Mirolevich and Frank Consoli took up Gallery II while Remixed was installed in Gallery III.

Remixed: a collaborative entanglement of used electronics was a project inspired by a random Facebook remark by Victoria Lassonde of The Sandpaper newspaper.

Following Remixed was our Summer group exhibition
which included over 50 works of art by 20 local and national artists.[Cram Concepts, Kimberly DiNatale, David Hoffman, Suzi Hoffman, Just Joszie, Ralph Katz, Sandra Milner, Artem Mirolevich, Samantha Palmeri, Suzanne Pasqualicchio, Lucy Reitzfeld, Robert Reitzfeld, Jack Reynolds, RJ Russo, Andrea Sauchelli, Steven Shattuck, Jon Slackman, Hena Tayeb, Karen Wallo, & Robert Zaleski] We also
managed that summer to host an exhibit by the local Girl Scouts. The
summer ended with two fun filled weeks of Summer art camp for the kids
and a much deserved two week vacation!

In September we re-opened with Monster Myths & Legends,
a show of intricately carved and printed woodcuts by Kentucky artist
Derrick Riley.

We produced a Paper-making How-to video for the internet
with the help of J & S Video Services, and just in time before the
hurricane hit we hosted an outdoor Pumpkin carving event.

Other eventful
moments included a Laundry Meat art performance and dinner in
April, Card-making and Paper Snowflake Workshops, a full year of First
Friday's Art in the Parlor Open Mics, Intersection Artist meetings, Yoga
classes, two birthday parties, and a weekly knitting circle. We've
hosted music jams, church bands, opening artist receptions, holiday
parties and poetry readings. We also completed our first full semester
of after
school children's art classes which ended with a student exhibition in
Gallery III.

The Lounge has seen its share of changes as well. What
started out as a comfy hang-out area with couch and coffee table is now
more productively maintained as the expanded gift shop. Very very
important meetings take place at the candy striped cafe tables in the
back corner, where various local artists like oil painter Suzanne
Pasqualicchio also hang their artwork!

The ever-evolving Gift shop is
now also the place to find unique and affordable work by some of the area's favorite local artists and artisans.

So, with all that, what will be ahead in 2013 for The Art House Gallery? We began this adventure with the slogan "if we build it they will come". The new adjusted slogan "Building an arts community one artist at a time"
properly puts that plan into action. We are so excited for the new
projects, new art, new classes, new exhibits, new events and especially
the new people that will make the list for this upcoming year! To all
our generous supporters and patrons, thank you for appreciating what we
do. Please keep up your much needed support. Our community deserves ART!!

"It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc...The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written... I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive."Excerpt from Mary Oliver's essay Of Power And Time